


Firebug

by Kieron_ODuibhir



Series: Cirque de Triomphe [28]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of fire, Arson, Detective Work, Earth-3, Ed is a dork, Friendship, Gen, Jumping to Conclusions, Mirror Universe, just plain jumping, this relationship tag apparently unprecedented, waylon is not his sidekick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-09 05:09:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20507906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kieron_ODuibhir/pseuds/Kieron_ODuibhir
Summary: The Great Detective and his seven-foot-tall occasional accomplice investigate a suspicious fire.





	Firebug

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little bit (actually written last October before I fell off the face of the earth) because I've sort of fallen out of the groove of posting mirrorverse stuff but I swear it's not abandoned!

Waylon Jones, the Crocodile, surveyed the blackened remains of what had been a building housing fifteen separate households.

He’d been here yesterday while it was still burning, diving in and carrying people out—his ability to jump from a third-story window and absorb the impact without serious injury had come in handy—but it seemed more terrible now, as a scene of desolation, with nothing more he could do to help.

Maybe because he’d left the survivors, those healthy enough to avoid hospital fees but suffering from bad enough burns and smoke inhalation that they were still at the clinic, rather than scattered to whatever emergency lodgings could be scared up, almost all trying desperately not to break down.

No one had died here, but nearly a hundred people had lost everything. The emptiness of the site was more terrible somehow than the heat of the flames had been, because in the middle of a crisis you had no way of knowing how bad it would be; there was the real chance of everything turning out more or less fine. This field of ash and rubble conveyed only the certainty of loss.

He shook his head. “Who could do this?”

“Stupid question,” said Enigma, dropping to one knee in the ash and turning over a scorched chunk of wood thoughtfully. “Anybody could do this. _You_ could do this. It’s arson. It’s not _complicated_.

"Actually the more skill you put into committing arson the more likely you are to get caught, because setting off multiple complex incendiary devices limits the pool to a _lot_ fewer people than dumping gasoline on a wall and throwing a match.”

Waylon continued standing upright, arms crossed over his chest with magnificent indifference. Enigma could be clever _or_ mind his manners; he apparently couldn’t do both at the same time. “Uh-huh. So you’re saying there’s nothing to learn here.”

“Oh, not nothing.” Enigma stood up. “Help me move this timber, would you? The cops closed this case without even opening it and I have my suspicions about why.”

Waylon ‘helped,’ which was to say moved the thing to where Ed seemed to be trying to push it, and then stood back again and waited patiently while the little detective cackled in satisfaction at having found exactly what he’d calculated would be there. “I knew it,” he said, lifting a squashed mass of blackened metal. “Someone who knew what they were doing was really determined to see this place burn all the way to the ground.”

“Don’t cut yourself,” said Waylon.

“On the incendiary device, or the razor edge of my own wit?” asked Enigma, with enough sarcasm in his voice that Waylon only rolled his eyes. “I’m fine, I have gloves. Do you want to listen to my exposition, or would you rather go get a coffee?”

“I’m here to make sure you don’t get squashed to death or shot, I didn’t volunteer to be Doctor Watson.”

Ed sighed. “J at least humors me. I really need my own sidekick.”

Waylon shrugged. This was not his problem. “So do you have a suspect yet?”

“How could I have a suspect, I _just_—who’s that?”

Rubble had started sliding down the far side of the only remaining heap large enough to conceal a person from this angle, in a pattern that could only be footsteps. “Stop them!” Enigma shouted, dashing down the most mathematically efficient path around the obstacles, while Crocodile was already launching himself into the air.

He came down in a huge puff of ash right in the path of the mysterious individual, who crashed blindly into him and bounced back off his chest. He caught them by the back of the collar and dragged them out of the center of the ash cloud, toward somewhere it should be a little easier to breathe.

Enigma caught up with them just as Waylon was pinning the coughing fugitive’s arms down with his hands, and observing as he did so that it was a young man, not very tall, reasonably fit, in a plaid shirt, with a heavy tan and hair that looked to be brown under the coating of grey. Utterly forgettable.

“I got him,” Waylon told the detective. “Why do I have him?”

“The criminal tends to return to the scene,” said Ed, and put the curve of his cane under the young man’s chin to tip it up—he was actually the shorter of the two, but the spot where he was standing was elevated enough to bring his eye level higher. “Who are you?”

“I live down the street!” was the resulting expostulation, broken by a cough. “I didn’t do anything! I’m a _fireman!_”

“What’s your name?” Enigma could tase the kid with a flick of a finger in this position; Waylon trusted him not to, or he wouldn’t be cooperating with this impromptu interrogation at all.

The mildly suspicious wearer of plaid recoiled for a second, then raised his chin enough that it broke contact with the question mark for a second and said, defiant, “I’m Garfield Lynns. Who are _you?_”

**Author's Note:**

> Firefly is in fact not the arsonist because he is a Good Guy in this universe, but he has the relevant expertise because he's the same person otherwise. So he's going to look more suspect the more Ed learns about him. 😂


End file.
